“Can I smoke?”, I asked, hopefully.  Kenneth was a smoker but in these days of pleasure anorexia, it always pays to ask.  From behind the wheel, Kenneth snorted, as he slid a Marlboro between his lips.  He smiled at me in the rearview mirror, as I reached for my pack of smokes.  “Of course!”, he answered. “Sparky is a smoking car!”

Olav, the Dane, while battling car sickness on the winding highway that led to the mythical beaches of Mayto, managed a wan cackle.  He was trying so hard not to puke.  I had to hand it to him.  I was as right as rain in Sparky’s back seat, as we barreled into the mountains, cigarettes lit – ready to hit the golden sands of our destination.

Sparky climbed toward El Tuito, engine ever reliable; unfazed by the altitude or the hairpin turns.  I swallowed to pop my ears.  As we rode high above the Pacific, we munched on potato chips and swigged cold beer.  This was a road trip, with all the bells.  We had come prepared.  The cooler was stuffed with booze and edibles.

“Can you believe how many different trees there are up here?”  Kenneth waved his hand at the vegetation on either side of the road, as Sparky’s wheels turned, bearing us past grandiose gringo villas, behind their imposing gates.  As we turned away from the coast, scrappy, laminate-roofed shacks and red-tiled, stucco homes took over.  We were almost in El Tuito.

And Kenneth was right.  The palms and tropical vines were rapidly giving way to towering pines, thickly hugging the side of the old coast highway as we turned toward the Sierra.

“We’re here,” Olav almost whispered, as we entered the small mountain town.  You could hear the relief in his voice.  He knew the worst of it was over with our ascent into the mountains concluded.

Kenneth eyed the street signs around El Tuito’s main square, as we rolled around it.  None of us had ever been to Mayto.  Of course, none of us knew the way.  We were running on pure instinct and the promise of three days of nothing to do except hang out on the beach, sunning our grateful hides.

“Look!”  My hand shot up, pointing to a small, wooden sign that simply said, “Mayto”.  It was nailed nonchalantly to a brick wall.  The humble sign was a good omen.  At least there’d been one.

Kenneth hauled the wheel right and just like that, we were on the road to Mayto, descending gently from the dense forest around El Tuito toward a vast expanse of mesquite plains and the ocean.

It was impossible not to notice the landscape changing as we rode, sipping our beers and pointing at the weird, giant cacti that had suddenly appeared.  We stopped to take selfies of a truly massive one, smiling before it for our Facebook friends.

“It’s the size of a friggin’ Volkswagen!” Kenneth narrated, waving his cigarette at the majestic, prickly cactus.  “I’ll bet we’re almost there.” He cheerfully stuck his cigarette back between his lips and headed to the driver’s seat, ash falling down the front of his t-shirt.

“Maaaaytoooooo…”, I breathed.  Olav was looking a little less green.  The descent was a straight shot to the Pacific and would be way easier on his stomach.

Piles of horse dung marked the remaining miles toward Mayto.  This was horse country because you could count on a horse when the rains came.  Cars, not so much.  Mesquite began to appear in the place of cacti and then, we were on the final stretch of dirt road that would take us to our destination.

Disembarking, we caught our breath at the sight of the place.  A row of impressive palms lined the beachfront.  Just beyond it, a crescent of golden sand hugged the vast Pacific.  The bay continued for miles, completely uninterrupted.  I’d never seen such an untouched beach.  I hadn’t even imagined that places like Mayto still existed.

“We’re in a postcard, guys,” I announced.  “We’re in a postcard with everything that should be on a postcard.”  I had lost my powers of speech, blurting out my wonder.  Olav, now well out of the woods of his car sickness laughed and threw an arm around my shoulder.  The festivities were about to begin.

We checked into two rooms purpose-built for our Mayto adventure.  Situated on the same floor, the rooms were served by a massive terrace for our private use.  We stood and stared at the pristine beach below us, incredulous that it stretched for miles on either side of the hotel.  There was no sign of human activity.  Just a lone man supervising his dog as it ran happily down the beach, tongue lolling in ecstasy.  There were no buildings in the area, save the hotel.  It was almost as though we’d been transported to another planet.

“How can this be here?” Kenneth stood at the whitewashed, wrought-iron railing, his hair ruffled by the ocean breeze.  The three of us looked out to sea.  It was in the back of all our minds, although no one had mentioned it yet.  The mere mention of it would require a round of drinks.

Busting out the booze, we pushed the big Mexican couch on the terrace into the sun.  The February wind was blowing hard, so we wanted the full effect – wind in our hair and sun on our faces.  We settled down to watch the sun set in this forgotten corner of the world.

Olav, a nurse, broke the seal on the conversation we all knew we were going to have.  None of us wanted to talk about it.  We were all, like most people in the world, hoping it would just go away.

“If it gets to Puerto Vallarta,” Olav said, “we’re all going to need to give up smoking.”  His measured Scandinavian accent somehow took the sting out of the words, but Kenneth and I weren’t convinced.  We both lit up again before the final word of Olav’s statement had hit the air.

“No!”, I responded, cigarette clenched between my teeth.  Kenneth’s low, comforting chuckle signaled his agreement.  But Olav was a nurse and he knew what was coming.

“I’ve been reading,” he stated, matter-of-factly.  “This is going to be a pandemic and it’s going to be global.”

I looked up from my red solo cup as I would at any such ominous pronouncement.  I knew Olav was serious.  I just didn’t want him to be.  Not here.  Not in Mayto, with a good-sized drop of cold tequila cradled lovingly in my hand.

Kenneth shook his head.  He’d been doing the logistics of needing to head up north to oversee a work contract.  “I don’t know if I should go,” he mused.  “What if I can’t get back down here?”

I knew he was right.  No one had any idea how big and ugly this virus would get.  But we could guess.  It wasn’t hard to guess, with airplanes crisscrossing the globe from points unknown.  People were bad at cooperating with one another, especially in the 21st Century.  A pandemic would not be well-received.  It would bring down the party.

My family hadn’t yet canceled their visit, but I feared they would.  My mother was in her 90s.  If things got crazy, I didn’t want her to come.  But then, what did we know?  Olav saw a potential pandemic, but he was a health professional.  Kenneth and I were just your average mugs, looking to outrun it.

And then, he said it.  He said the words we didn’t want to hear, gazing out at what had to be one of the last virtually untouched corners of Creation in our time.  We didn’t want to hear any of it, while humpback whales were jumping in the bay.  We didn’t want to hear it, ever, truth be told.

“Millions of people may die.”

And that’s when Olav was asked to desist.  I broke out the edibles, distributing pieces of them, as a priest might Communion wafers.  This elephant was too big for Sparky.  And it was too unthinkably big, dark and ugly for Mayto’s sweet, golden shores.